The next beacon gave me a Breach Bomb II for free. Just for kicks, let's see how far this ship can limp along before dying. Okay, I've got 1 health left, barely workable weaponry, and terrible defense. So close, with my halberd beam just two seconds away from killing! But the only possible choice now is to jump away. It is past the shields, so its hit check has already happened. I got one more Halberd Beam shot in, then this: So I landed a few volleys that way, but so did the flagship. I was never able to pierce through all three shields, but multiple times did drop one by ion and one by combat drone so that the Halberd Beam could get through for 1 damage. My ion charges and combat drone missed everything, while all three flagship missiles hit onto my Zoltan shield. Let's go out in style with my mighty six hull points challenging the prototype flagship. This event gives you the choice to avoid the fight, which I probably should have done, but screw it. I ran into the flagship construction event. Sector 5 happened to be the Rebel Stronghold. So now the plan was to pray we could get through just enough enemy shielding with the one Charge Ion and Combat Drone such that the Halberd Beam could deal the offense. The Combat Drone both penetrates shields and deals damage once they're down, a much more versatile resource.

The Beam Drone is win-more if you can keep the enemy shields down, you can win by any method. Combat Drones are pretty much always better. Sold one of the Charge Ions, and swapped out the Beam Drone for a Combat Drone. Holy crap indeed! A Halberd Beam from nowhere, instantly injecting new life into this run.Īt the next store, I reworked my equipment loadout. Reaching Sector 5 without a third tier of shields is generally a harbinger of doom. I even had to run from at least two ships that were too lethal. It just wasn't working, a classic doomed run falling behind the power curve in spending all its scrap on repairs instead of upgrades. Not only that, but I was drawing terrible luck on encounters, damnably few fights and lots of blank beacons and events. I'd take piles of damage from each fight this way, through sectors 3 and 4 and into 5. While the beam drone was gradually dealing damage at random, the enemy ships would be taking just as many chunks out of my own health. Problem is the beam drone doesn't do anything to disable the enemy ship or its nasty attacks. The two ion weapons are enough to keep enemy shields permanently in stunlock, while the beam drone deals the damage and eventually makes the kill. The first access I had to any weapon was a second Charge Ion as a twin to the one the Zoltan C ship starts with.

I also didn't document this from the beginning as I hadn't had any intent to report on it. I'm not here to go over the basic details of the ship layout and what it does and doesn't do, you can find that elsewhere online. This was my second attempt with Zoltan C, the Cerenkov.

Most runs aren't particularly memorable, using the same standard tactics to work through the game, rack up scrap, and defeat the flagship. I've played FTL: Faster Than Light a lot, aiming to beat the game on Hard difficulty with all ship layouts.

Ftl faster than light drawings